Bruderhof Radio - Cuba against Empire (2000)

Speaker 1: After a few years of being ignored by most Western media outlets, Cuba is once again in the international spotlight. The saga of Elián González, the 6-year-old Cuban boy whose custody battle captivated 2 nations, catapulted the island back to the forefront. And the recent visit of Cuban President Fidel Castro to New York for the United Nations Millennium Summit, and the furor surrounding his simple handshake with President Clinton, Reminds us that Cuba can never be entirely ignored or forgotten. As the United States exerts its economic and military might around the globe with impunity, Cuba is one of the few countries able to resist. Managing to endure a severe economic embargo and numerous attempted coups and invasions, Cuba remains one of the few real thorns in the side of the United States.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Cuba!

Fidel Castro: Cuba!

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Cuba!

Speaker 1: And as the post-Cold War era moves into its second decade, The United States' attitude toward Cuba looks more and more like a strange relic. In this program, we'll take a look at some of the ways the United States government, mainstream media, and Cuban exiles in the U.S. try to undermine Cuban sovereignty and bring down the communist structure that has been in place for over 40 years. And we'll examine how Cuba, although comparatively poor, is able to resist such attempts through a national dedication to education and healthcare. We'll speak with Karen Wald, a Californian who has spent the last 18 years living in Havana, Cuba's capital. Wald is both a civil rights activist and a journalist who has worked for American and Canadian broadcast television and news magazines, as well as the BBC and Radio Havana, Cuba. She is also the author of a book, Children of Che: Childcare and Education in Cuba. In addition, we'll hear from Cuban President Fidel Castro himself, Speaking in New York earlier this month. The most egregious weapon used against Cuba is the ongoing economic embargo of the island. Put in place in 1961, the embargo has clearly failed in its primary objective of toppling Castro's communist state, and yet it remains in effect. But another, less well-known method that the United States government uses to undermine Castro is the luring of defectors into America with promises of asylum. I'm a Cuban-American. Laws such as the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 grant illegal Cuban immigrants special privileges that are denied to immigrants from all other nations. Karen Wald.

Karen Wald: The State Department periodically issues reports which admit that the overwhelming majority of Cuban immigrants to the United States, or would-be immigrants, are economic immigrants, just as they are from anyplace else in the world. But because we're not told that, Where there has not been a serious challenge to a very cynical and hypocritical policy of immigration toward Cuba, which has made it extraordinarily difficult to emigrate legally from Cuba and extraordinarily tempting to do it illegally. The Cuban Adjustment Act, which replaced the Cuban Refugee Act— the Cuban Adjustment Act, which has been on the books since 1966 and is still on the books, says that if a Cuban—

Speaker 5: Cuban citizen.

Karen Wald: Unlike anybody else from any other part of the world, if a Cuban comes in as an illegal alien, sets foot on U.S. soil, that they can automatically stay. Not only can they stay, they get a green card, which means they can work. They have residency. After 1 year and 1 day, they can apply for citizenship. There's welfare for Cubans. That is, they get a monthly stipend, food, housing, clothing allowance. They get job training or university scholarship. Well, you know, You offer that to almost any other country in the world, and, you know, their countries would be half empty or more. And that's what sends hundreds and thousands of Cubans to their deaths in the Florida Straits every year, is that particular policy. Elián isn't over. Elián is safely back in the arms of his father, of his grandparents. He's back at school. He's happily playing with his playmates. But there are Eliáns who are dying all the time. because of that particular policy that lures people over with the image of what a wonderful life they're going to have if they can just get to, to Florida. And I think we have to start changing that, and we have to get our Congress members, we have to get the media to start looking at what's really happening in Cuba.

Speaker 1: Indeed, Karen Wald faults the mainstream media in the United States for assisting the government in systematically spreading lies and distortions about Cuba and Fidel Castro.

Karen Wald: Over the years, there have been all these different reasons given as to why we should be hostile to Cuba. In the very beginning, it was enough to just say, oh, Cuba's going communist, and Cuba is exporting revolution to Latin America and Africa. They didn't talk very much about how much some of those African and Latin American countries needed revolution. But in general, the idea was just, these are bad people, they're communists, and they're—

Mumia Abu-Jamal: They're bad.

Karen Wald: revolutionaries. But what happened in the '60s was a generation of people my age who were saying, exporting revolution to Latin America? Right on. That's a good idea. That's a good thing for them to be doing. And then a lot of the campaigns started becoming more sophisticated. So they tried to say, well, look, they've had this revolution 10, 15 years and there's still racism. Or they've had this revolution all these years and Cuban men are still super macho and there's still sexism. That is, ways to kind of undermine— Right. The support, not because the people in this country who were waging those campaigns really cared about racism or sexism or homophobia. They probably were guilty of all of those themselves, but they knew it would make progressive and liberal people who were looking toward the Cuban Revolution say, well, maybe it's not worth having a revolution because that doesn't solve the problems. And a lot of people, I think, unfortunately fall for that. And because of that, the policy of demonizing Cuba, of making Cuba seem like such a terrible place to live that people say, oh, well, you know, look how, you know, Cubans want to come over here from Cuba, that they're even willing to risk their lives on these rafts and these flimsy boats. That conventional wisdom makes sense to them because of all that the press has not told us over the years.

Speaker 1: U.S. policy toward Cuba is built on the premise that the communist state is inherently evil, and that Fidel Castro is a ruthless, totalitarian ruler. But as the United States itself becomes more and more economically and racially stratified, it is worth asking what is so evil about a society that provides much more for its citizens than the United States does. While the U.S. continues to spend exorbitant amounts on its military, and as our educational system becomes more and more underfunded and ineffective, Cuba has taken a different route. Cuba is a socialist country. In speaking with a number of Americans who recently visited Cuba, we found that they came away with an overwhelming feeling that Cuba places the education and health of its children at the top of the national agenda. Karen Wald raised both her children in Cuba and has seen firsthand the results of this Cuban policy.

Karen Wald: Much to their credit, Fidel's generation has always understood the importance of the next generations and of the young people. And you see many young people in top leadership positions, many, many young people holding very important positions because they understand that this is a process that goes on from generation to generation. They haven't resolved everything. They haven't waved a magic wand. They've just set in motion a process whereby each generation can keep improving things. Elián has the possibility that if he studies and works hard, he is going to have a decisive role in his own country. But Cubans have never been satisfied with that being just for their own country. There is one of the billboards that I think some of you have seen when you've visited Cuba is a quote from another Cuban leader when he was at the United Nations, Carlos Laje, who pointed out that there are 200 million children sleeping in the streets tonight throughout the world. Well, none of those are Cuban. And it's not just that Cuban children are among the few who never have to worry about sleeping in the streets. Those 200 million children around the world who sleep in the streets also Um, don't have medical care. They also are probably going to bed hungry. Uh, and, you know, Al Gore at the Democratic Convention when he was trying to, um, uh, claim credit for what he considered all of the gains that have occurred over the last 8 years of the Clinton-Gore administration said, this isn't a matter of chance, this is a matter of choice. Well, I agree. None of those— the things that happen in any country are a matter of chance. They're a matter of the choices that people make and that their leaders make.

Speaker 5: Thank you.

Karen Wald: The choices that both Republican and Democratic administrations have made in this country have left 44 million people in this country with no access to medical care, no medical coverage at all. So those are matters of choices, too. If Cuba, a poor country that's been blockaded for over 40 years, can have a universal healthcare system that brings the best healthcare available to every single city in the most remote parts of the country, you can't tell me that we cannot have an adequate healthcare system in this country. If their children all over the country go to school and get an excellent education all the way through college and graduate school, and that's a poor, blockaded country, you can't tell me that that kind of education cannot be available for people here. Those kinds of educational and healthcare systems aren't by chance. They're because people and their government believe that all of those are essential, fundamental human rights that every person is entitled to. And I think we have to start—

Mumia Abu-Jamal: I agree.

Karen Wald: defining things that way here, too, so that people get what they need, at least get all the basics of what they need. Cuba isn't a model. It's not a blueprint. But it's certainly an inspiration for saying that, you know, what could be and the way that people could live if, you know, if they redefine their values and decide that health and education are more important than the Pentagon's budget.

Speaker 1: While in New York recently for the United Nations Millennium Summit, Fidel Castro gave a 4-hour speech at the Riverside Church in Harlem. He scathingly criticized the role of the U.S. in oppressing much of the world with economic and military muscle flexing, while extolling the virtues of his own nation and the role it plays in assisting Central America in healthcare and education. In fact, Cuba has had such success with its literacy programs that it has exported them to neighboring nations such as Haiti, which has a 45% literacy rate.

Speaker 5: We do not have illiterates in Cuba.

Fidel Castro: Veinte años que sean alfabetos.

Speaker 5: We eradicate illiteracy.

Fidel Castro: Elian, con seis años, cumplirá siete el seis de diciembre.

Speaker 5: Elian, who's only six years old, sabe ya leer y escribir.

Fidel Castro: Entró en segundo grado. Teníamos que importar los analfabetos para aprobar.

Speaker 5: We could not import the illiterates.

Fidel Castro: Después se tradujo al portugués.

Speaker 5: So we produced the system also in Portuguese.

Fidel Castro: Y las autoridades de Haití, el gobierno de Haití, al conocer este programa nos pidió que lo preparáramos en creol.

Speaker 5: Se preparó en creol. It was produced in Creole.

Fidel Castro: Se ha estado experimentando con 300 personas en Haití. Y son asombrosos los resultados. And the results are really amazing.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Amazing.

Fidel Castro: Ahora van a hacer el experimento con tres mil.

Speaker 5: They will have the experiment very soon expanded to three thousand people.

Speaker 1: You're tuned to Bruderhof Radio, a bimonthly program dedicated to broadening and expanding the bounds of progressive thought and action. If you've got questions or comments about today's Thank you for joining us. If you'd like to support our program, give us a call at 1-800-778-8461. That's 1-800-778-8461. Or visit us on the web at www.freespeech.org/rüterhof. Historically, the U.S. government has feared that Cuba would be the starting point of a communist epidemic that would sweep through Latin America and threaten our hegemony. While Cuba has not succeeded in that regard, what it does export is quality healthcare and education.

Karen Wald: There's an old phrase about give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll be able to feed his family for a lifetime. Well, Cuba for 4 decades has been helping poor and Third World countries by sending doctors, teachers, agricultural technicians, and other specialists to help them meet their essential needs of their people and to develop. But it's also— and is especially known in terms of sending doctors and medical personnel during periods of emergency. It's also been offering scholarships to students from the Third World. to train them in all of these areas. And when Hurricane Mitch so totally devastated Central America, one of the other first things that Cuba did was to convert a naval academy outside of Havana into a medical school for Latin America, for, you know, so that the Central Americans, the Haitians, all those who— because what they were finding was so many times their doctors and nurses would go trudging through Sometimes through forests or jungles with backpacks for days on end to these remote villages to treat people. And they'd find that these people had never in their entire lives seen a doctor. And they realized that you need to do more than just put a bandage on it. You need to let them help produce their own doctors. And so they've set up medical schools for these, you know, students of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti. And they're doing a wonderful job. El Salvador, but also now their doctors that go to Africa and to other places are also helping set up the infrastructure and train people there so that they can have their own medical schools in their own countries, so that they can produce doctors to care for their own people. And that's the kind of ongoing example, again, that, that why the world looks to Cuba when they talk about the example of solidarity that Cuba gives to the world. It's not just with rhetoric. It's not just with speeches at the UN, but what they're actually doing in practice and helping people to help themselves.

Speaker 1: And Cuba's dedication to practical assistance extends even to the United States. In New York, Castro recalled a meeting with a U.S. congressman who mentioned the poverty and lack of health care in his district. Castro, ever the statesman, offered to send Cuban doctors to the United States, just as Cuba sends them to El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Speaker 5: It was an occasion when we had visitors. When we had the visit of some congressmen from the Black Caucus, there was a congressman who came, and I was describing this problem to them, and this congressman said, I have many places in my own district where they do not have a doctor. I said to him, "How come?" I said, "And now I realize that you are the third largest inside the United States." And I said to him, "We are willing to send you." I said to him, "We are willing to send you our doctors." But in spite of efforts like this, the United States government continues to portray Castro as a dictator.

Speaker 1: And despite the United States' attitude to Castro, he remains one of the most respected leaders in the world. Third World nations especially applaud his forthright opposition to Western economic imperialism.

Karen Wald: Over and over again, when Fidel and other Cuban leaders— but each time Fidel has spoken at some international forum, the The EcoSummit on environment in Brazil in '92, the Food Summit a few years ago, all of the international forums with leaders from various countries around the world, he is almost always the head of state who receives the most and longest sustained applause from all of the others. And a lot of that, it's not just a recognition of his historic role, it's because— He's a great speaker. He and Cuba speak out for the needs of all of the peoples of the Third World. The United States unfortunately does play a very bullying-type role in its international relations and essentially lets other countries know, you know, do it our way or we are going to make you suffer. We are going to cut off trade or we are going to cut off credits. Or with the UN, I mean, we are something— millions and millions of dollars in debt Because we haven't paid the, you know, the U.S. portion of the expenses to the U.N., because when we disagree with decisions, it's like, well, I'm going to take my ball and go home if you don't do it my way. And Cuba, in that sense, has nothing to lose. The U.S. has already cut Cuba off. The U.S. is already not allowing trade. And the Cubans go right ahead and say what many, many other countries in the world would like to say, calling for fair trade, calling for—

Speaker 5: Human rights.

Karen Wald: A more equal distribution of the wealth of the world, calling for the more powerful countries to stop exploiting the poorer, the less developed, or intentionally underdeveloped countries of the world.

Speaker 1: One particular issue about which Castro is outspoken is the question of political prisoners in the United States. While the State Department has long criticized Castro for locking up his political and ideological opponents, And Castro is by no means innocent of these charges. The United States categorically denies that it imprisons anyone based on ideology or political preference. Fidel Castro believes otherwise, and he has come to champion the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist who has been on death row in Pennsylvania since 1981. Although sentenced to death for the killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Jamal's supporters say he is innocent. He's innocent. A victim of racism, and claim he was railroaded through a racist court system in retaliation for writing numerous articles critical of the Philadelphia Police Department. Castro's mention of Jamal's case drew resounding applause in New York.

Fidel Castro: Y sé que están enfrentados en una lucha.

Speaker 5: And I know that you are involved in a very hard struggle.

Fidel Castro: Una lucha que nuestro pueblo respalda.

Speaker 5: A struggle that our people will. support fully, which is the struggle of Mumia Abu-Jamal, condemned to death.

Fidel Castro: We know that he has been sentenced Cuya injusta pena ha levantado un gigantesco movimiento de opinión en todo el mundo. Este caso, como aquel, lo he estudiado, se lo he planteado y analicé incluso su origen social.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5: I have even analyzed his social origins, las condiciones de marginación, the conditions of marginality in which he was born, los primeros problemas legales que tuvo.

Fidel Castro: Lo he citado como ejemplo.

Speaker 5: The first problems he had with the law, a nuestro propio. I have explained that to our own people.

Speaker 1: As a token of his appreciation for the support of Castro and the Cuban people, Mumia Abu-Jamal recorded a statement from prison to be played for Castro in New York. Jamal agrees with Karen Wald's assessment that the U.S. should look to Cuba as an example of how a government should care for its people.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: It is time for us all to recognize the futility of the blockade that continues to stifle Cuban economic life. In a time when the watchword on every major politician's lips is Free trade. How can such a thing as the blockade, a naked restraint of trade if ever there was one, be maintained? It is an anachronism, a rusty tool of the Cold War era, due for storage in a dusty museum of another century. It should be joined by the Cuban Adjustment Act, another Cold War relic of another age, another time. If lawmakers were If we were honest, it would be called the Cuban Destruction Act, for it lures poor and desperate people into the shark-infested, treacherous waters of the Florida Keys. Every empire in the world has acted like an economic magnet for poor people on the periphery, but it is inhumane to set up a system that treats their survival like a deadly obstacle course. Like the Black The blockade, the so-called Cuban Adjustment Act, punishes free trade and also forbids free travel by Americans to that island just 90 miles offshore. It, too, is an idea whose time has passed. We gather today to join our voices to the swelling chorus of millions calling for an end to the blockade, repeal of Helms-Burton, and an end The recent American media fever over Ilan has provided an invaluable opening for those who want to bring some sanity to an American foreign policy that is muddled in madness. Take heart, for madness cannot last forever. Even the most raging fever will break. You are all the breath of fresh air that is signaling the return of sanity.

Speaker 5: Thank you.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: We also want to thank you for your continuing resistance to the empire, for 4 decades of remaining true to the revolution, for building a system where education is a fundamental human right.

Speaker 1: Abu Jamal's glowing tribute notwithstanding, Cuba is by no means perfect. Yet it seems that this small nation, suffering for years under economic blockade by the United States, has managed to care for its people, especially its children, in a way the United States has not. And even with the favoritism shown Cuban immigrants by the Cuban Adjustment Act, there remains something in Cuba that Elián's father, Juan Miguel González, found more attractive than all the toys his Miami relatives could offer his son. And perhaps it is just this refusal to accept the base materialism of Western capitalism that makes the United States so irritated by Cuba.

Karen Wald: All the newspapers that editorialized finally that, you know, Elián should be reunited with his father all said the same thing, despite the fact that he's taking him back to a repressive communist dictatorship. And they never even paid him the respect to think that maybe a man as good, as patient, as gentle and wise as Juan Miguel certainly seemed to be once he came over here and people had a chance to meet him. That maybe he wasn't taking his child back to a repressive dictatorship, that maybe he was taking him back to— first of all, he was taking him home. And every single person in any country of the world has that right to take their child home. But beyond that, that he may also have felt, and I think he certainly does feel, that Cuba is one of the most wonderful places to take a child. From the beginning of the revolution, people have talked about— the Cubans talked about Cuba, where the only privileged are the children. Children have been the jewels of the revolution. Everything is for a child. There's another very common Cuban statement: there is nothing more important than a child. I took my children to Cuba from the United States. It's true, I could have given them much more materially, just as Juan Miguel could have given and Leon much more materially if he had simply gone to Miami and accepted the $2 million that the Cuban American National Foundation had offered the family. He could have lived quite well with his son in Miami if you think that living well is only a matter of clothes and toys and all of the things that you can buy with money. But there are more important things. I was walking down the street at one of the One of the many, many rallies for Elián that happened all during the 7 months that he was being held in the United States. I was walking toward the rally site surrounded by streams of children on either side, and I would just randomly take, you know, my tape recorder and ask some of the children why, you know, they were going there. And there was one young— must have been about 10— young black boy in one of their In a school uniform, white shirt and red pants. And after he was explaining why he was going, so that, you know, Elián could, you know, would be able to be returned to Cuba, I said, but, you know, he could live much better there. Didn't you see on the television all the, you know, the gifts, the toys and things that they're giving him there? And he looked at me and he said, Le vamos a dar un mejor regalo. We're going to give him a better present: la dignidad, dignity.

Speaker 1: That's all for this edition of Bruderhof Radio.